P.J. Gladnick

P.J. Gladnick is a freelance writer and creator of the DUmmie FUnnies blog.

I am probably the only writer on NewsBusters to have received an award from the Soviet Union. It was for my work as an American correspondent for Krokodil Magazine which you can see chronicled in I Was A Commie Writer.

I live in South Florida which is full of eccentrics which is why I feel right at home here. My main accomplishments in life were winning a bottle of aftershave when I was eight and having the biggest PING List (over 1000 Pingees) on the Free Republic forum for my DUmmie FUnnies blog. This is fortunate since I suffer severely from Ping List Envy.

Prior to the advent of the Web, I wrote a syndicated humor column that appeared in dozens of newspapers throughout North America. Only complete humility forbids me from telling you that my columns appeared in the Houston Chronicle, St. Petersburg Times, L.A Herald-Examiner, Winnipeg Free Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Vancouver Sun, and lots of other periodicals that I am much to humble to list.

Oh, I also produced an award-winning satirical comix website called PJ's Comix. This sort of balances out the fact that I am the WORST basketball player in the world.

When I lived in Los Angeles, I wrote comedy material for comedians. Sorry, due to business ethics I can't reveal any of their names (Argus Hamilton).

Latest from P.J. Gladnick

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman who at least until very recently suffered from extreme Trump Derangement Syndrome wrote on on May 21 that Trump is correct in attempting to reset our trade relationship with China. In case you thought this was Friedman merely experiencing a brief moment of mental clarity, he also appeared with Steve Bannon on CNBC and mostly agreed with him about the need to push China into a new trade agreement.

We are currently hearing a lot of doom and gloom about the trade war with China from the media talking heads, particularly on MSNBC and CNN. Their big claim is that President Donald Trump has put the United States at a disadvantage by raising tariffs on Chinese goods in an effort to get China to lower their tariffs and other barriers on American exports to that country. However, CNBC's Jim Cramer on Tuesday's Squawk Box, explained how Trump is using the right tactic as well as how the talking heads are getting it wrong.

Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent is promoting the latest video by serial impeachment ad-maker Tom Steyer under the headline "Democrats are badly blowing it against Trump. A brutal new TV ad shows how." The ad avoids the central finding of the Mueller Report of no Trump-Russia collusion and pretends that there was obstruction of justice, which the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General did not find, for a crime that did not happen.

Ooops! It's a safe bet that it wasn't the intent, but a Tuesday afternoon MSNBC report on the latest unrest in Venezuela made a very good case for why the Second Amendment, giving citizens the right to bear arms, is very important. It happened during a report by Kerry Sanders from Miami updating Andrea Mitchell on the latest news about the troubles in Venezuela.

In case you're curious about the mysterious rise of South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg in the Democrat presidential polls recently, Politico has revealed it was not so much because of grassroots support but much more due to an incredibly intensive campaign for media attention. The person behind this media hype campaign appears to be one Lis Smith, a well-connected hyperactive Democrat operative with a lot of political experience.

Did New York Times columnist Tom Friedman have a true epiphany resulting in a "flying pigs" moment when, after going on a tour of the border, he declared that a high wall as President Donald Trump has wanted is needed? Well, not exactly. His call for a high border wall problably comes more from desperate political expediency since Friedman has a history of extreme Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Are you a male Democrat running for President of the United States? Well, the best thing you can do is withdraw from the race in favor of a woman thus proving you are worth voting for despite the fact you are no longer running.That is the bizarre logic of Vox's Matthew Yglesias who made this claim on Twitter on Wednesday. Therefore Bernie Sanders would earn the support of Yglesias by dropping out of the race in favor of, say, Elizabeth Warren. At that point he woud qualify for Yglesias' vote despite it becoming absolutely worthless to him since he would not be running.

It looks like Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, one of the few liberal journalists who has been skeptical about the now-discredited Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory over the years, is about to lose even more friends over his harsh critique of the press in light of the Mueller Report findings. Basically he stated on Tuesday that "The Press Will Learn Nothing From the Russiagate Fiasco."

Just how extreme do the 2020 Democrat presidential candidates have to be to shock even CNN anchors? So extreme that they either support voting rights for convicted terrorists such as the Boston bomber as Bernie Sanders endorsed or willing to have a "conversation" about it as Kamala Harris suggested before changing her mind.

Did you know that viewers of Fox News had their minds shaped that the Mueller Report was good news for President Trump. That is the premise of Aaron Rupar at the liberal website Vox. According to Rupar, Fox News fans would have been unable to determine that fact if left to their own devices. No, they needed to be be convinced of that by the network's "pro-Trump spin."

Alan Dershowitz told Howard Kurtz on Sunday's MediaBuzz that, despite his long and distinguished legal career, CNN chose Michael Avenatti over him to be their go-to guy for legal analysis about the Trump-Russia collusion probe.

Politico on Wednesday chronicled Beto O'Rourke's tragic loss of his magic mojo in "Why the Media Dumped Beto for Mayor Pete." Buttigieg, in today's media environment, is "burning with the velocity of a prairie fire on a gusty Indiana day."

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni claimed on CNN's New Day on Wednesday that President Donald Trump lacks the smarts to understand the full Mueller report. "I'm imagining someone doing a slideshow, you know, with little captions, here's what the report says. He may not. He doesn't have that sort of discipline or span of attention."

New York Magazine published an article on Tuesday that makes one think the author, Luke O'Neil, watched "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" perhaps a few times too many. The aura of that movie (both original and remake) seems to have infected his horror tale story, "What I’ve Learned From Collecting Stories of People Whose Loved Ones Were Transformed by Fox News" to the extent that it comes off as a parody of itself that could be called "Invasion of the Fox News Body Snatchers."

MSNBC's Ali Velshi seems to love the word "bifurcated" since he couldn't stop yelling it at possible presidential contender Howard Schultz on Friday. Velshi kept repeating "bifurcated" over and over and over again as if it was a weapon to be used to attack the former Starbucks CEO for the high crime of possibly splitting the anti-Trump vote in 2020.

In the wake of the release of the Mueller Report, New York Times "conservative" columnist David Brooks seems to have done some soul-searching and has concluded that President Donald Trump is owed an apology. Of course, among those who owe such an apology to Trump is Brooks himself as we shall see in his Tuesday column, "We’ve All Just Made Fools of Ourselves — Again."

Spin, Spin, Spin! The famous Benny Goodman tune was "Sing, Sing, Sing" but one could be forgiven if the Spin tune title comes to mind along with the tune while reading Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne's furious and often laughable spin on what is obviously for him a very disappointing Mueller Report. His highly entertaining spin control took place on Sunday in "Six takeaways from Barr’s letter about Mueller’s probe."

Perhaps the revelation of the long-awaited Robert Mueller report is a good time for the mainstream media in general, and Politico in particular, to finally retire that hackneyed meme, "Republicans pounced." For at least a year that worn out term has been used whenever Republicans have responded to erroneous Democrat or liberal positions. It didn't matter how much in the wrong the Democrats were, if Republicans offered any kind of reply or correction, it was often translated by the MSM as "Republicans pounced."

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow wasn't quite as unhinged on Friday over her Mueller Report disappointment as she was on Election Night 2016 but you could hear the cracks in her voice and notice her eyes going moist. Her emotions ran deep as Maddow reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was not blocked in any way by Attorney General William Barr from putting what he wanted into his report.

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